Memorial Stones

Yesterday was a day of reflection. It began early in the morning while watching the CBS morning show. They reviewed the last five decades of last century. I lived through four of them. It's really amazing to see all that has happened since then. Then I listened to a three part "Focus on the Family" featuring Ravi Zacharias recorded earlier this year which became the most requested and number one airing broadcast of the year. Ravi spoke of remembering our past. He read the complete chapter Joshua 4. God spoke to Joshua and told him to have twelve men, one from each tribe of Israel, to go into the middle of the river and pick a stone. They were to carry it on their back to the place where they made camp that night. They came up out of the river and made camp at Gilgal and Joshua took the stones and placed them there.

Joshua 4:21-24; He said to the Israelites, "In the future when your descendants ask their fathers, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them, 'Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.' For the LORD your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The LORD your God did to the Jordan just what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful and so that you might always fear the LORD your God."

We must remember that where we are today is because we stand on the deeds and merits of those who came before us. This great nation was founded on Judeo-Christian worldview, God in the center. Ravi pointed out that when Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural address which was less than 800 words, he invoked the name of God fourteen times. Today if a president were to invoke God's name once, he would run the risk of hostility from the media. We have forgotten. Talk about God or Jesus in public and see where it gets you. An atheist group has filed a lawsuit attempting to ban prayer from the Obama inaugural ceremony and also ban using the sentence "So help me God," in the presidential oath. God is the designer of law and government. He gives the power of governing to the magistrate and it is through that oath that the magistrate is sanctified. We have forgotten. We have dismantled our memorial stone monuments and with the stones built self honoring, self serving institutions and in so doing we have wiped away the memory of who we are and how we got here. We have become a "stiffed neck people."

My prayer is that in this New Year we will find ourselves again. This nation is still the greatest nation on God's earth but our light is dimming. The election of this past year gives us a new leader who promises change. We must pray for our new president. Whatever your political view, you must pray for our president elect. Pray for wisdom and strength and pray that he would follow the word of God. There has never been a more urgent time than now. I believe this is probably the most defining moment in American History. We need God and we need to see God do immeasurably more. And then we need to go down into the river and bring up stones to place as memorial stones. In the future when our descendants ask us, "What do these stones mean?" We can say, they remind us that what God did was so we might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful and that we might always fear the LORD our God.